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AGP Graphics Slot Explained – Accelerated Graphics Port

AGP Graphics Slot

So What is the AGP Graphics Slot? Read Below…

So just what exactly is an AGP graphics slot? The initials ‘AGP’ are an abbreviation of the term ‘Accelerated Graphics Port’, which is the commonly used term for describing a specific point to point video card interface that is used to connect the card to your computer’s processor and memory.

In simpler terms, the AGP is used as a way for your computer to generate video images that are produced by graphic generation programs. To put it simpler still, it allows you to connect a graphics card to your computer and achieve better and faster graphics while you play video games.

The AGP Graphics Slot is most commonly used for video games that require their graphics to be sent with a data stream and calculated, as opposed to simply passing through your computer like a TV signal does. Many serious video game players prefer playing with the advanced graphics offered by specialized graphic cards, which are connected to the computer’s motherboard.

These graphics cards have their own, separate processors which are used just for decoding and generating videos, and so they are capable of creating graphic images of a much higher resolution than standard graphic chips that rely on the CPU for processing graphics output.

These specialized graphics cards can be installed onto a PC’s motherboard via the AGP graphics slot, where they can receive data from the graphics stream before processing and sending that data to the CPU.

AGP Graphics Slot Features

Initially, when it was first released in the late 1990’s, the AGP graphics slot provided quite a big boost in performance over the old PCI slot, and this difference in performance increased further as gradual revisions were made over the years. Not only does the AGP slot have a dedicated path to your computer system’s processor and memory, but it also has a number of differences in its design features that assist it in outperforming a PCI as far as graphics performance is concerned.

Three of these big advancements in design that the AGP has over the PCI are detailed below:

Firstly, a feature called ‘pipelining’ means that the AGP graphics slot offers much improved data transfer. This term is often used as a way of describing an AGP slot’s ability to receive and simultaneously act upon multiple instructions. Meanwhile, a PCI requires each piece of information it receives to come separately before it can act on it.

Side Band Addressing is another feature that increases the performance of the AGP graphics slot. All this means is that extra lines of data are sent with each packet, instructing the system as to where the data needs to be used. As PCI’s do not have this information addressing system, it needs to look for itself where the data goes and so performs much slower.

Texture maps are allowed to be stored in your system’s memory with AGP, as opposed to being limited to only the memory of the graphics card, as with PCI. Your system’s memory allows more space and much faster access than the graphics card memory does.

Conclusion

As you can see there is a lot to learn about the computer keyboard. I hope these articles on the keyboard will prove useful to your understanding of the keyboard and your understanding of the entire computer.